Highlights From Intel’s Research “Science Fair” Day
June 12th, 2008 by Joanna Stern
Today I had the pleasure of attending Intel’s Research Day held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Rather than showcase the chips of the present, Intel showed off, in a very high school science fair fashion, over 70 futuristic technology innovations and inventions.
Most interested in the mobile technology, rather than the home and medical innovation being shown off, I jotted down notes on a few very compelling technologies likely to soon mate with laptops and mobile gadgets. In what Intel is calling “Carry Small, Live Large,” we can expect our mobile Internet devices and laptops over the next few years to:
- Contain Magnometers and Accelerometers. If I were a judge in the science fair I would say the winner was the displayed Sony UX with a magnometer dongle. The dongle gave the device the ability to act as a compass, recognizing which way was North, South, East and West. On display on the screen was an image of Tiananmen Square; as you turned the direction of the device (or your body) different sections or views of the square appeared, just as if you were standing right there in the center of the square. Even better, the accelerometer let you zoom in on the picture by just angling the device forward. Built-in software let the computer know the picture was showing and it pulled information from the Internet on the history of specific buildings.
By now you’re probably sick of trying to figure out what all these processor code names mean. Silverthorne? Is that for me? Menlow? What’s that?